


Pillow Talks

by ellerean



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 18:29:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2357882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellerean/pseuds/ellerean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their first night in Australia was strange and sleepless, but only because they didn't touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pillow Talks

**Author's Note:**

> This topic has been done to death but apparently people still wanted me to write it.
> 
> (aka, I've been working on this for a week.)
> 
> Not the most creative title, but it's a play on my [pillow talks](http://letsswimtogethernanase.tumblr.com/tagged/pillowtalks) series. Even though there's not a lot of talking.

He was used to listening to the cicadas. They’d cracked the window before bed but the noises were discomforting, whispers of conversations in an unknown language and the passing of foreign vehicles. The pillows were too plush, and too numerous, and too much of the blanket was wedged between Rin and the mattress.

The understanding had been easy, watching the Australian swim team, watching Rin swim in that pool. It wasn’t the decision to swim that frightened him—Haru had always been swimming; it was the only path to take. It was knowing that when dawn came, he would be changed.

Haru watched Rin’s shoulders shift as he breathed, exposed over their shared blanket. Rin had made a big deal out of the single bed, but Haru hadn’t minded. It wasn’t the first time. It was fitting, Haru conceded, that the boy who’d convinced him to swim in his relay was the same man who still convinced him to swim.

Haru moved slowly, as not to wake him, but he had to touch Rin. His mere existence wasn’t enough, like at any moment he could disappear and Haru would be alone again. Rin’s shorts had slipped far below his navel, exposing the skin that Haru touched under their blanket. Rin curled tighter into himself but didn’t make a sound beyond his steady breathing, and Haru wondered if he smiled in his sleep.

Rin always smelled of chlorine, a scent he was so often immune to. It buried itself into the clothes and skin, oozing from every pore even after three showers. His nose brushed the back of Rin’s neck and he breathed in, inhaling that calming scent of familiarity and home, of drive and competition.

It was Rin’s scent, lingering even though winter. It was embedded in their school uniforms, the walls of their bedrooms, the blood in their veins.

Haru heard his own name spoken, faintly on the cold breeze, a suggestion of initiated conversation. He denied hearing it at all—this was _his_ time—but when the top of his hand was warmed by another’s palm, Haru understood that his time was no longer his alone.

Rin moved in slow motion as he lay on his back. He blinked slowly, adjusting to the dark that Haru was already accustomed to. Haru could sense when he came into focus—Rin’s dawning realization that his bedmate was awake, and that they were holding hands.

Haru accepted the fluidity of the moment, of unspoken words and careful movements, waiting a beat before kissing the curve of Rin’s jaw. A sigh blended with the foreign sounds of a foreign land, and it felt right that Haru couldn’t sense whose lips it had escaped from.

Haru wondered if he still slept as he stroked his jaw; Rin was so still, eyes closed again to the ceiling, but his heartbeat betrayed him. His pulse was a butterfly desperate to escape, flapping madly as Haru’s fingers brushed the delicate skin. He resented that Rin wore a shirt; his hand mechanically swept down his neck, down the hard muscles of his chest, down across each sculpted crevasse of his abs.

Perhaps with the dawning of a dream the soul is knitted to its match, fusing into one whole. Haru hadn’t asked for the shirt to come off but Rin was tugging the back of the collar, abdomen contracting as the fabric peeled off his skin.

Haru thought it right, too, that he remove his own shirt, feeling nothing but the crisp sheets and overstuffed blanket and Rin’s bodily warmth. But it only made his skin colder, every hair on his body standing on end.

Haru’s hands roamed his body, admiring the muscles Rin had trained for years to perfect. Because Haru admired Rin, too, and in the moment hadn’t known the words to say _“I feel the same”_ or _“I admire you, too.”_ He could only express it with his hands, the hands he’d used to paint and swim and cook, the hands used for creation. Haru kneaded Rin’s body like clay, as if he could improve upon its perfection. Desire was not something they discussed, not a desire that extended past their mutual need for water. Not the desire of Rin’s warm breath on his mouth, or the need to lie facing each other, legs tangled beneath the blanket. _Australia_ , Haru thought, imagining the life Rin once lived there— _here_ —and would live once again. Japan and high school were to be forever; none of them would truly _leave_ , even as summer peaked and autumn threatened in its approach. Rin would return to Japan, yes. He would take the ten-hour flight with Haru in a couple days’ time, but Haru didn’t know the next time Rin would again soar over the Pacific toward home.

The traffic out their window lulled and the sound of Rin’s breath magnified. His eyes were a red blur in Haru’s vision, too close. He’d expected Rin to say something— _anything_ —about the absurdity of it all, the annoyance of a single bed or having to share a blanket, but his protests would be invalidated by their joined legs and hands. When Haru rolled to his back Rin followed, like they were welded together. Rin was unembarrassed by his erection, pressing to the curve joining Haru’s thigh to his pelvis and a slight grind as he shifted uncomfortably.

There was the sound of his name again and Haru heard it clearly this time, tasted it on his lips. He tasted Rin; he exhaled into his mouth, and Rin inhaled deep like he accepted it. Rin’s chest was clammy and bare, his skin too smooth from shaving. A child’s skin on a man’s body.

Rin was older at that moment, surpassing high school while Haru was still in it. Haru was preoccupied teasing his childhood friend while Rin wanted so badly to grow up. To bring him along.

“ _Rin_.” It was the only word suitable to speak, the embodiment of his attention and desire.

“Mmm.”

Haru couldn’t see his mouth but he felt his smile, so happy to have helped find his dream. _Thank you_ , Haru thought, as he tilted his head, never having kissed before, unsure whether the lips he met had ever tasted another’s.

Rin may have shivered but he felt _warm_ , so warm. If Rin were the water he’d have surrounded Haru, soaking his skin and the sheets beneath him. He felt the fluidity of the mattress, of the water beneath him. He welcomed it as he spread his legs, drawing up his hips. They both wore underwear and shorts but Haru could feel him, holding back a cry of pain when he pressed hard to Haru’s testicles. He couldn’t speak; it would ruin the atmosphere. Rin quickly shifted back farther, the movement jerky and obscure in his midnight haze, but Haru calmed again when Rin’s hands were on his hips, his erection prodding where Haru never considered he’d wanted to be touched.

Rin’s hair was silk, his tongue hot in his mouth. It neutralized the cold breeze through the curtainless window. It shot fire through his veins. Rin moved slowly and Haru responded, one soul and one mind.

It was inevitable to think of the following morning, or the immediate moment they would stop kissing, faced with the reality of their mutual astonishment. But like swimming, kissing Rin was what he was meant to do. It was why they shifted sleeplessly their first night in Australia, not because of the shared bed or the foreign land but because they didn’t touch each other.

“Say something.” Haru’s murmured Japanese was strange in that room, and Rin was jarred out of their reverie. He panted, hot wisps of breath on Haru’s skin.

“Haru, I—”

“In English.”

In a language he didn’t understand, desperate to hear the foreign words strung together in an order that didn’t make sense, in a country that didn’t make sense, in a hotel room charged with fear and change.

Rin spoke between kisses, scattered words and phrases into Haru’s mouth, into his cheeks and neck. _“I love you, Haru_. _”_ He understood his own name as Rin’s stomach pressed down on his swelling erection, arms and legs draped around the whole of Rin’s body.

_“I’m sorry, and I wish things had been different when I came home the first time. I don’t know what’s going on. But I know I needed you here and I needed the man who changed my life in the country that had done the same. It’s just like you to do something like this. It drove me crazy sleeping next to you and not touching you, and I dreamed that you kissed me and I still think I’m dreaming. But you’re so warm and real and I love you so much. I’m sorry. Stay with me.”_

Haru didn’t want to comprehend. He didn’t even want to understand the words that stood out, not even his own name in Rin’s rambling English, too many words spoken too rapidly.

 

 _“I couldn’t come back here alone. I’m sorry you felt lost but I’m glad if it meant you could be with me now. My homestay parents love you and_ I _love you, and I’m afraid to go back home. Everything is perfect right now and I’m so proud of you. I’m_ so _proud of you, Haru. You’ll go so far. We both will, together.”_

 

Haru wanted silence again. He wanted only the weight of Rin’s body, he wanted whispers of a breeze and the sound of their kisses. He wanted to roll over, feel Rin beneath him as their shorts were urged off, as the blanket slid off the bed. With Rin on his back he could see him better; Haru could watch his face as he tossed aside their shorts. He’d known that Rin wore trunks, but it was different in a bed opposed to the communal space of a locker room. Rin didn’t make fun of his fish-patterned boxers as he typically would. Not when his hands were on them, slipping beneath the black cotton to feel his thighs.

Rin seemed surprised by his legs; Haru knew he looked lanky, but muscles corded beneath his skin, too. Rin watched his own hands as he squeezed Haru’s quads, his mouth an _O_ of surprise. It was an invitation, Haru deemed, as he leaned over Rin again, kissing him as Rin felt his hamstrings, as if needing proof that Haru had the firm muscles at all.

_“You’re beautiful.”_

Rin spoke in English, and Haru understood.

 

* * *

 

There was more of Australia to see, more than Rin could fit into a meager few days. He showed Haru waterfalls, and the aquarium, and the park overlooking the water. They swam at the aquatic center, Haru in Rin’s jammers. Haru wanted to try his legskins; he wanted to feel the taught fabric on his skin, damp with chlorinated water. But Rin would never give them up.

They didn’t touch, not any more than Rin usually touched him in public. His memory was dreamlike as he watched Rin crack open crab legs at lunch, laughing as he dripped liquid butter onto his paper bib. He wondered if the night had happened as they walked the beach after, the freezing water lapping their bare feet.

“Having a good time?” Rin asked.

They sat at the fountain, the same where he’d been lost and confused. Haru leaned back, the fountain’s water following his grazing fingertips, desperate to cling to his skin. Rin sat so close that their thighs touched and his gaze couldn’t be anywhere but the side of Haru’s face. Rin fitted his cap on Haru’s lowered head, like that could shield the emerging smile from the world. But Haru still smiled, and Rin could still see it beneath the brim, and that was answer enough.

**Author's Note:**

> ([Here](http://letsswimtogethernanase.tumblr.com/post/98394067308) on tumblr.)


End file.
